High School Scores Drop 30 Percent

Superintendent To Detail Plan To Fix Problem

November 16, 1998|By AL LARA; Courant Staff Writer

BERLIN — While local elementary and middle school students continued to surpass their counterparts in similar school districts, some high school students slipped a bit, recently released statistics show.

Scores of high school sophomores taking all four tests of the Connecticut Academic Performance Test during the 1997-98 school year dropped more than 30 percent from the previous year, according to the latest Strategic School Profiles from the state Department of Education.

Meanwhile, students in grades 4, 6 and 8 taking the Connecticut Mastery Test outperformed students in similar school districts in almost every category.

School Superintendent Richard Paskiewicz said school officials are working on the problem with the CAPT scores. He said he will detail what will be done at tonight's school board meeting.

The CAPT consists of four tests -- language arts, mathematics, science and an interdisciplinary section. Last year, only 14.5 percent of Berlin sophomores who took all four tests received a certification of mastery. The average from economically similar school districts was 16.3 percent, while the statewide average was 13.6 percent.

That same year, Berlin juniors and seniors taking the Scholastic Assessment Test scored their highest test averages since 1985, and one student scored a perfect 1,600.

Berlin's 1997-98 CAPT figure is a sharp drop from the 21 percent of students who achieved mastery during the 1996-97 school year, and the 18.5 percent in 1994-95.

But comparisons between the local CAPT scores for 1996-97 and 1997-98 are skewed by the earlier group's unusually high score on the language arts test. Sixty-two percent mastered the test in 1996-97.

The profiles also show:

* The cumulative four-year dropout rate in Berlin, 4.5 percent, is the highest in years, but similar increases have been reported statewide. Berlin's dropout rate remains far below that of similar districts and the statewide average of 15.7 percent.

* The number of hours of instruction Berlin students received during 1997-98 lagged behind the state and similar school districts, but a longer school day being implemented in the 1998-99 school year is expected to change that. Class sizes remain larger than statewide averages in most grades.

* Berlin teachers remained better educated than their peers across the state during the previous school year, but the number of minority teachers dropped while the number of minority students increased, the profiles show.